Transformers: Beast Wars is an entertainment franchise from Hasbro, and part of the larger Transformers franchise. The fiction directly follows the Transformers: Generation 1 continuity established by the 1984 series and animated film, while ignoring the continuity established with the Japanese Transformers: The Headmasters anime series. Previous to Beast Wars, Hasbro had attempted to relaunch the original toys and animation as Transformers: Generation 2. Hasbro intended another franchise titled Transtech to follow, combining Beast Wars and Generation 1 characters and aesthetics, but this was cancelled. Instead the franchise began a series of reboots, beginning with the Japanese-produced Transformers: Car Robot series.

Beast Wars was succeeded by Beast Machines, a new series with a new creative team in charge of production. The Maximals find themselves back on Cybertron, malfunctioning and trapped into their first beast modes (the ones they had at the beginning of Beast Wars) without memory of what happened previously, fighting for survival against mindless drones called Vehicons. With the whole planet empty and all of the Transformers missing, Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Rattrap and Blackarachnia begin a new crusade, this time to free the entire planet.

The white lion is occasionally found in wildlife reserves in South Africa and is a rare colour mutation of the Kruger subspecies of lion (Panthera leo krugeri). It has been perpetuated by selective breeding in zoos around the world. White lions are not yet a separate subspecies and they have been said to be indigenous to the Timbavati region of South Africa for centuries, although the earliest recorded sighting in this region was 1938. Regarded as divine by locals, white lions first came to public attention in the 1970s in Chris McBride's book The White Lions of Timbavati. Up until 2009, when the first pride of white lions was reintroduced to the wild, it was widely believed that the white lion could not survive in the wild. It is for this reason that, now, a large part of the population of white lions are in zoos. Another large part, however, are bred in camps, for canned hunting trophies.

It is hard to determine exactly how many white lions there are today, because they are held in captive breeding and hunting operations which don't keep adequate records. Based on available evidence, The Global White Lion Protection Trust estimate there are 500 White Lions world-wide.